Environmental destructibility and its impact on gameplay, as well as my much more natural interaction with such environments - hulking out and destroying anything that's between me and my target - stemming from such rich possibilities, are one of my favorite things a game can achieve. The original XCOM, Frostbite-era Battlefield, Red Faction - envrionmental destructibility is part of their Magic Sauce, and definitely one of the directions I expect games to go more frequently, the more processing power and memory gets available to game designers.

It's the one thing this new XCOM doesn't get quite right. It doesn't let me fire at the environment at will, like I was able to in the original XCOM games. Its envionments are just as destructible as the original XCOM's environments were, and it's littered with explosive bric-a-brac (never seen an explosive barrel I wasn't allowed to shoot on purpose 'til today). Hell - I've sent my share of aliens to the afterlife with environmental explosions already, despite not being able to target them at will - cars just make for shitty cover.

Enemies, as well as myself, are shooting through solid objects without phasing them (despite them actually being destructible), because dice-rolls trump hitboxes, which from a 'feeling' perspective seems utterly wrong to me - and this happens way too often to be dismissed as a bug - it's just how the system is set-up. My gut tells me, letting players shoot anything at will, like in the original, would do wonders for the already excellent combat - and hitboxes have to take priority over dice-rolls. The diceroll should determine, if a shooter shoots true, but when there's an environmental hitbox in the projectile's trajectory - likely cover of some sorts - it should hit and destroy the cover, regardless of what the diceroll says. With a system in place to deal damage exceeding the cover's hp-pool to the character behind it - because that's how it should be handled, as far as I'm concerned.

I love the game, but this circumstance is definitely offputting and so very unlike the original XCOM, and there's no good reason I can see, why the modern XCOM shouldn't handle things in a similar way when it comes to environmental destructibility. My only guess is, they couldn't pull it off within the timeframe and budget they got to complete the game. Praying to the gods that the game will be a big enough financial success to warrant future productions, so Firaxis gets to iterate upon it, and make the game even better than it already is.

Anyways - what are your thoughts on combat, shooting through cover, dicerolls trumping hitboxes, not being able to target environmental elements on purpose (outside of using explosives), and so forth?

Putting a rocket into the side of a crashed ship was great.. Or detonating its core abd watching the mayhem.. Ahh those heady days

I find it a little annoying too, lets hope this will be addressed in a future update.

@Gladiator_Games said:

Putting a rocket into the side of a crashed ship was great.. Or detonating its core abd watching the mayhem.. Ahh those heady days

Shooting holes into the walls was great to flank aliens, and eroding cover with gunfire always feels great. Also - when shots went totally awry, they didn't just miss their target by an inch. They were stray shots flying across the battlefield, capable of causing any kind of mayhem - like blowing up a fuelstation, or killing a civilian.

Most defnitely the new XCOM's part in most need of iteration and polish.

I agree. Like others, I always use explosives to target cover and give myself an advantage. I wish I could do this with other weapons. Furthermore, I wish that certain terrain things had a more obvious cover properties. I've learned that hard way that buses and trains are the absolute worst places to hide.

Thinking about it some more. The whole thing has likely also to do with the 'infinite ammo' design decision, and what players would do to the destructible environments with unlimited ammo, and how that circumstance would negatively affect the game's gameplay depth - so the designers don't allow us to act so.

There's got to be ways to make the two concepts mesh properly - and if one has to go, then it's got to be 'infinite ammo'.
 
Also - I'd have fun setting up a killzone by destroying everything in sight, but I can see how that can be considered lame.

@seppli I think you figured it out with the infinite ammo. Given the option, people would just clear cut every level from the start and it'd lose a lot of depth. It's like what would happen in Bad Company MP. With too much destruct ability, the levels got ruined after awhile and the game was less fun. At least XCOM still provides the tools for destruction, but limits their amount, not abilities. I think it ultimately balances out.

I'm not trying to sound rude. More so because i recently started playing the originals so im not a long term fan but what is with the idea that this game has to be like the original? As much as it doesn't sound great to hear, time has passed and stuff moved on. While i get some things could be better, so many people seem to just want the original with 3D graphics. *Shrugs* I kinda like it how it is. I hated time units, disliked the ammo system because you never knew the length of any one fight.

Just use a grenade. Hell, the rocket seemed to be designed for this, since it doesn't do that much damage.

@Seppli said:

Thinking about it some more. The whole thing has likely also to do with the 'infinite ammo' design decision, and what players would do to the destructible environments with unlimited ammo, and how that circumstance would negatively affect the game's gameplay depth - so the designers don't allow us to act so.

There's got to be ways to make the two concepts mesh properly - and if one has to go, then it's got to be 'infinite ammo'.

Also - I'd have fun setting up a killzone by destroying everything in sight, but I can see how that can be considered lame.

That's a fair reason. As it stands there are ways to deliberately destroy the environment using grenades and rockets. The AI almost fucked me over by doing just that.

1 guy drops a grenade, blowing up all my cover, and 3 more roll in to shoot the exposed soldiers. Thankfully they miraculously missed, but you get my point.

@Seppli said:

Thinking about it some more. The whole thing has likely also to do with the 'infinite ammo' design decision, and what players would do to the destructible environments with unlimited ammo, and how that circumstance would negatively affect the game's gameplay depth - so the designers don't allow us to act so.

There's got to be ways to make the two concepts mesh properly - and if one has to go, then it's got to be 'infinite ammo'.

Also - I'd have fun setting up a killzone by destroying everything in sight, but I can see how that can be considered lame.

Yeah, Rock Paper Shotgun's review made the same conclusion. Modders might find a way around it. It would be nice if you could purposely level the environment, but because there is infinite ammo, and the environments already get pretty heavily messed up between plasma weapons hitting cover, grenades, and rockets, it would just be ridiculous if you could purposely destroy everything.

There's got to be ways to make the two concepts mesh properly - and if one has to go, then it's got to be 'infinite ammo'.

I agree. I'd like to do away with infinite ammo in any circumstance.

My biggest gripe so far is that the poison mist from Thin Men can cause cars to explode. I'd seen it happen before, but couldn't figure out what caused it...and then just now, half my team got wiped out because the "poison" from a Thin Man blew up a car, which caused one of my soldiers to panic and open fire on another car...which then exploded and killed him and two others.

EDIT: I'm also getting tired of games portraying cars as incredibly explosive. Cars don't explode if you shoot them a few times. That's not how cars work. If they worked like that, most accidents would end in explosions.

I agree that you should be able to target the environment, but in a game as mechanics driven as this, dice rolls have to trump hitboxes every time unless the game makes it very clear when an attack will or will not intersect with the environment.

I hate getting "magically" shot through several layers of cover. Including entire buildings. Probably my biggest problem with the game.